GLOBE’S AFROFUTURIST ‘DREAM’ A NOSTALGIA TRIP

Of all of Shakespeare's comedies, “A Midsummer Night's Dream” offers its director the most freedom to imagine the world of its characters.

So the production that opened Saturday on the Old Globe's outdoor Lowell Davies Festival stage is a fitting send-off for its director, Patricia McGregor, who leaves San Diego this month after seven years to become artistic director of Manhattan's New York Theatre Workshop.

This is the third “Midsummer” McGregor has directed in San Diego since arriving in 2015, and her new, self-described “Afrofuturist superhero” staging is chockablock with eye-popping ideas and references to the theater, films, music and culture that she loves.

Arriving on the heels of Comic-Con, “Midsummer” has the battle scene, visual pop, bombast and costumed pageantry of a Marvel movie. But like an “Avengers” film, it's a lot to absorb in one sitting, and some of the play's underlying subtleties get lost in the mix.

In collaboration with scenic and costume designer David Israel Reynoso, McGregor's “Dream” production wraps the Bard's love-and-fairies play in a Day-Glo, P-Funk space opera world, complete with a DJ booth helmed by hip-hop artist Miki Vale, who cleverly raps in rhyming couplets the pre-show “turn off your cellphones” announcement.

Shakespeare's “Dream” is set in the forest of Athens, where four young Athenian lovers and a troupe of amateur actors stumble into some magical mischief devised by the fairy king Oberon and the sprite Puck.

In McGregor's staging, the duchess of Athens — Amazonian warrior Hippolyta — is a liberated ninja warrior with the braid and bow of “Hunger Games” archer Katniss Everdeen. Besotted Athenians Hermia and Lysander are now a same-sex couple. And the bewitched fairy queen Titania and pompous actor Bottom, who Puck temporarily transforms into a donkey, exhibit their spellbound attraction with a wacky twerk-and-grind dance.

In a nod to McGregor's theater passion, the Athens acting company sing lines from “Funny Girl,” “Into the Woods” and “Carousel” and study from the book “Shakespeare for Dummies.” The fairies dress in marvelous, Afrofuturist costumes and wigs, and their voices are miked with an echoey reverb. It's a cool sound effect, but it muffles some of their words.

There are also snippets of scenes from the movies “Night at the Roxbury,” “Say Anything,” “Planet of the Apes” and “The Wizard of Oz,” as well as a soundscape of pop and hip-hop songs from the '80s to today.

Cast standouts include the regally authentic Paul James and Karen Aldridge as Oberon and Titania; endearing Jake Millgard as the braying actor Bottom; Jamie Ann Romero as the nervously befuddled Hermia; Victor Morris as Hermia's stern dad Egeus; and Camilla Leonard as the kick-fighting Hippolyta.

Because “Dream” is a traditional starter play for Shakespeare newbies, McGregor has made it an entertaining, lively and contemporary story for tweens and older. She has given a poke to the play's patriarchal themes, dressed it with playful choreography by Paloma McGregor and streamlined the script to just over two hours. But, at times, it feels too overstuffed with staging ideas when the Bard's words alone could suffice.